Providing customer services, such as bill payment services, manually by customer service representatives via a telephone typically consumes an inordinate amount of personnel time in terms, for example, of customer service representative telephone traffic. Therefore, a manual bill payment service is a service-related problem for a financial institution, such as a bank. Automation of such a bill payment service would enable the bank, for example, to off-load a tremendous amount of telephone traffic from its customer representatives.
Further, off-loading telephone traffic from customer service representatives by automating such services would enable customer service representatives to provide more service to the same customer base by spending more time with individual customers. Additionally, automation of bill payment services would enable customers, for example, to schedule their payments no matter where they may be located throughout the country. The financial institution may also provide other financial services, including for example, a direct access service, which customers can access via their personal computers (PCs), and he financial institution may also want to allow its customers to utilize bill payment services aspects of such direct access service via the financial institution's automated telephone service.